And that's a good thing in the wake of Thursday night's 109-40 loss to the host Lady Commodores in the opening round of the Vanderbilt Holiday Classic at Memorial Gym. The Lady Bisons, 3-7, will play Longwood, 4-9, Thursday afternoon at 1. The 12th-ranked Lady Commodores, 10-1, will play Indiana State, 7-3, in the championship game,

Longwood, from Farmville, Va., lost 79-69 to Indiana State in the opening game. Longwood has lost six straight games. The Lady Bisons will be the fourth Atlantic Sun Conference team Longwood has faced. They beat North Florida at home 52-45 on Nov. 18. They beat Campbell at home 56-54 Nov. 28. They lost 66-44 Dec. 16 on the road at Gardner-Webb.

This will be the first meeting between the two schools.

Catie Woods and Jilian Partin led the Lady Bisons in scoring with nine points each. Partin also led in rebounds with four.

The Lady Bisons played without three starters _ Kaleigh Gossman, who has not played this season due to medical reasons; Tiffany Arnold, out of the rest of the season due to medical reasons; and Miriam McAlister, out indefinitely for medical reasons.

"Someone asked me if we are rebuilding, but now we are doing some reconstruction," Lipscomb coach Frank Bennett said. "We have lost some major load-bearing beams. We are having to work to replace those.

"That's three of our most athletic and taller players. We figured going into the season that Kaleigh and Miriam would give us a super-solid No. 4 forward position with Miriam playing some at No. 5. We expected Tiffany to play the No. 3 forward position. The No. 4 position has taken a major blow."

The Lady Bisons shot 28 percent from the field, hitting 14-of-50 shots. They hit 33.3 percent of their 3-point shots, hitting nine-of-27. They only went to the free throw line seven times, hitting three.

Vanderbilt placed four players in double figures. Amber Norton scored a game-high 14 points followed by Jessica Mooney with 12, Jennifer Risper with 11 and Carla Thomas with 10.

Vanderbilt held a 41-21 edge on the boards. The Lady Bisons turned the ball over 29 times with Vanderbilt committing 22.

Bennett is stressing winning the rebounding battle and turning the ball over less than the opposition.

"Our rebounding is going to be by committee," Bennett said. "We have gone to a quota system like the men's team. The majority of our turnovers are coming from passing and catching errors and in some games it has been footwork errors. Those are areas we are trying to improve on."